


back of the mind

by waterpots



Category: PRISTIN (Band)
Genre: F/F, internet friends au i guess lol, what's with me and citizen kane and kyungwon lately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterpots/pseuds/waterpots
Summary: Nayoung travels to New York to meet some online friends, Minkyung is more than happy to travel along with her.





	back of the mind

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of strange...I’m sorry if it’s weird for you. It doesn’t have much of a plot and I’ve been sitting on it half finished for a while (I wrote most of it and then school picked up I’m sorry). An ambiguous very early 2kyung or naminky if that’s how you’d rather see it lol. The title...meaningless.

 

“Don’t you guys also think this is a little poorly thought out?” Minkyung asked, taking a fry from the group plate in the center of the table.

“Not really,” Sungyeon replied, absorbed with her phone. “We met Chungha last summer, and she’s already met everyone, so it’s not like anyone is lying about who they are.”

“Oh, or it could be a multi-faceted plot, in which all of the girls you’ve supposedly seen photos of are also kidnapping victims, as an elaborate ruse to fool you into thinking there’s no way you’re being catfished.”

Sungyeon glanced up at Eunwoo, then at Minkyung, mouthing “it’s not” at her. Minkyung just nodded. She knew that.

“Plus i mean, as we’ve seen on Catfished--Catfish? Wait, which is it.” Eunwoo pulled out her phone to Google. “No put that away,” Yaebin said. “We don’t do that stuff here. We think this thought in our perfectly functioning brains like men.”

“Yeah,  I just looked it up, it’s completely irrelevant,” Sungyeon said. Yaebin rolled her eyes.

“And regardless,” Eunwoo said, Eunwoo of all people pulling the conversation back to its intended purpose. “It’s New York! Even if they aren’t who they say they are, you and Nayoung can hang out and have fun in the Largest Apple together!”

“The Largest Apple?”

Eunwoo scoffed. “What do I look like? Some kind of plebian? I am a trendsetter.”

“You know Nayoung only asked you because she trusts you to go along with her, so what’s the issue?”

Minkyung shrugged. “I’m a little worried about third wheeling.”

“Seventh wheeling,” Eunwoo corrected. Yaebin snickered. “Isn’t Kyungwon going anyway?”

“Oh?” Yaebin turned to look at Eunwoo, crossing her arms over her chest. It seemed like a bit was coming on.

“Yes, you may have heard of her.”

“Yes, I hear her and Minkyung get along exceptionally well given the circumstances.”

“Well, what circumstances?”

“Well, as it happens, the only time we hear from this Kyungwon lass is when she’s on a discord chat with Nayoung.”

“She also seems like a lot, I hear.”

“More than us?”

“Ostensibly so.”

“E-gad!”

“Oh my god, you both need to stop,” Minkyung said, laying her head on the table. “We talk sometimes. She’s obsessed with Citizen Kane even though she refuses to watch it.”

“When Nayoung mentioned it both you and I were there,” Sungyeon said, now abandoning her phone. “Did you repress it for some reason?”

“My central executive refused to let it pass from my phonological loop into my long-term memory store.”

“Wow,” Eunwoo said, leaning her head on one of her hands. “Did you take a psychology class on working memory or something? How cool.”

* * *

They took a bus up to New York. They could have flown in, but the bus was just the slightest bit less of a hassle.

“Are you okay?” Minkyung asked, opening one eye and looking at Nayoung, who was looking out the window at the trees along the highway. One of the perks of having known Nayoung from many years was somehow mastering the language of Nayoung’s many silences. Which were calm silences, which were worried silences, and which were angry ones. Today’s had a decided pensive flavor added to it.

“Worried,” she answered. Minkyung smiled and rubbed Nayoung’s shoulder comfortingly. Nayoung had known these people for years now, five, she was pretty sure, and the only person Nayoung had met was Chungha (who, as these things happen, couldn’t make it to this small meetup they’d planned). Minkyung actually had no idea what they’d originally met or bonded over, she didn’t even think to ask Nayoung, but she knew how much they meant to her.

“It’ll be fun, don’t worry.”

“It’s gonna be weird.”

“Oh yeah, weird as hell. But fun.”

Nayoung leaned her head back against her seat, closing her eyes. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“The perfect excuse to go check out New York City, and to not have to pay for an airbnb by myself,” she replied.

“Kyungwon was excited when I told her you were coming.”

“Kyungwon gets excited over professional bocce ball.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing.”

“She’s being the change she wants to see in the world,” Minkyung said, and Nayoung let out a silent laugh.

* * *

New York is a big city, and Minkyung wasn’t really a big city kind of gal. She’d been to some, sure, but generally when she was younger, and with her parents. When you’re young and travelling with your parents, nothing matters, because they’ll pull you out of any trouble that arises and you never stray particularly far. When you travel with your friend’s internet friends, you spend most of the time desperately trying to convince Kyungwon to stop staring at the Jehovah’s witness in the airport, before he comes over and starts trying to talk to them about religion.

Nayoung had to physically force Kyungwon’s head to face front until they got outside the airport. It was an ordeal.

“I was going to bring my box set of Death Note,” Kyungwon said, when she’d finally retrieved control of her head and also leg movement (she had control over them, excluding Siyeon pushing her desperately for the door, complaining under her breath about being the only one of them who actually lived in a city). “Since we said we were going to watch it.”

“We said we were going to go to the Museum of Modern Art,” Kyla corrected. “Nobody wants to watch Death Note.”

Kyungwon frowned. “I could have sworn we wanted to sit in the airbnb and just watch Death Note. That’s why we spent all this money to get out to New York. To watch Death Note.”

“We could always watch Citizen Kane,” Minkyung said. She’d spoken quietly, more to herself than anything.

Kyungwon gasped, giving her an offended look. “I would rather die.”

“I have somewhere I want to go,” Yewon finally spoke up. “It’s not too expensive.”

And so they went.

* * *

Minkyung tried to keep to herself. Not in an uncomfortable way. She certainly wasn’t hiding from the group, or refusing to answer questions, but she could tell when she was the odd one out, and she tried to make things as comfortable for everyone else as possible.

How she ended up lost, staring at a wax sculpture of JFK, with only Kyungwon to keep her company, was beyond her.

“Do you think they’ve noticed we’re missing?” Minkyung asked.

“They’re probably only coming back because you’re lost,” Kyungwon replied. “Oh. That sounded really sad. I meant it as a joke. You know, like I’m annoying and so they’d leave me behind except you’re here and so now it’s worth finding us. I suppose that sounds sad regardless. They’d come find me if I really went missing, probably partially just because I would sell information about them in exchange for food or shelter.”

“Would you really?”

“I’ve honestly never been put into a situation where I’ve really had to test that out, so I can’t tell you. It’s like those old experiments, y’know? ‘I’d never harm a man,’ but then when a scientist tells you to, you kill him.” Minkyung stared at her. “I’ve been in a place.”

“Hard to tell.”

The two sat in silence for a while. Kyungwon had texted Siyeon, and as a precaution Minkyung had also texted Nayoung (“I don’t trust Siyeon to come find us.” “Then why don’t you text Nayoung or Kyla or something?” Kyungwon didn’t answer her.)

It was Jieqiong who found them, coincidentally. And potentially completely by accident. Nayoung and Siyeon had, as it turned out, gone looking for the two of them in the vastness of the wax museum. They’d left the other three to enjoy themselves, but Jieqiong had apparently left her phone somewhere, and after retrieving it and trying to return into the group, she ran into them, staring at a wax sculpture of JFK.

“He’s dead, you know,” she said to Minkyung.

“I know?”

“Okay, I just thought you should.” And she brought them back to the group.

* * *

Something about the amount of Chipotle Yewon could wolf down was uncomfortable. Or unsettling. They’d all been confused when she bought three meals, but confused they were no longer.

“She’s so unassuming,” Jieqiong mumbled from next to Minkyung.

“The world is a mysterious place,” Kyla mumbled from next to Yewon. Yewon, completely oblivious, kept eating. Siyeon and Nayoung were trying to figure out the best way to get where they were going the next day. They were oblivious. They were safe. They weren’t floating on the broken rope in space that everyone else had been forced to endure.

“This wouldn’t have happened if we just went to Oregon,” Kyungwon said from Minkyung’s other side.

“You need to get over the idea of us going to Oregon. There’s nothing there.”

“There’s a trail!”

“The Oregon Trail literally isn’t in Oregon.”

“Then it’s bullshit!”

“I don’t know where you expect the conversation to go from here,” Jieqiong said, and they settled into silence.

* * *

Kyungwon ended up in front with Siyeon, and they were doing god knows what in the name of humor. Of jokes. Of a good time to enjoy themselves. The airbnb was only a few blocks away, so they walked.

“I can’t believe you already got lost,” Nayoung said. The two had ended up in the rear of the group.

“I don’t know how it happened,” Minkyung said with a laugh.

They watched Kyungwon and Siyeon up front. Everyone was, really. Kyungwon pulled out an oversized map (who the hell carries physical maps anymore), and started pointing and turning, making gestures to claim they were in the wrong place.  

“That’s a map of Illinois,” Minkyung heard Kyla mumble.

“I live in Illinois.” That was Yewon.

“I know,” Kyla said awkwardly.

“Has it been weird?” Minkyung asked Nayoung.

Nayoung looked at her, and smiled. “But fun.”

“Good.”


End file.
